History of the Jews in Kurdistan
The Jews of Kurdistan are the Mizrahi Jewish communities from the geographic region of Kurdistan, roughly covering parts of northwestern Iran, northern Iraq, northeastern Syria and southeastern Turkey. Kurdish Jews lived as closed ethnic communities until they were expelled from Arab and Muslim states from the 1940s–1950s onward. The community largely spoke Judeo-Aramaic. As Kurdish Jews natively adhere to Judaism and originate from the Middle East, Mizrahi Hebrew is used for liturgy. Many Kurdish Jews, especially the ones who hail from Iraq, went through a Sephardic Jewish blending during the 18th century.
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Rabbi Moshe Gabai, head of the Jewish community of Zakho, with Israeli President Yitzhak Ben-Zvi in 1951 | |
| Total population | |
| 200,000–300,000 | |
| Regions with significant populations | |
| Israel | c. 200,000 |
| Languages | |
| Israeli Hebrew, Northeastern Neo-Aramaic dialects (mainly Judeo-Aramaic), Kurdish dialects (mainly Kurmanji), Azeri Turkish (in Iran) Additional: Mizrahi Hebrew (liturgical use) | |
| Religion | |
| Judaism | |
| Related ethnic groups | |
| Other Mizrahi Jews, Ashkenazi Jews and Sephardic Jews; also Samaritans | |
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| Jews and Judaism |
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In the present-day, the overwhelming majority of Kurdistan's Jewish population resides in the State of Israel, with the community's presence coming as a direct result of either the Jewish exodus from Muslim states or the making of Aliyah by stragglers in the following decades (see Kurdish Jews in Israel).